Tito Targets House Prices With Rate Hikes

In the US, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has not mentioned housing prices as a cause for raising interest rates out of fear that he might cause their imploding bubble to crater overnight. Our Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni however knows when to call a spade a spade:

We had not properly anticipated or priced in the sociology of interest rate reductions -- economics is about human behaviour -- and the sociology of the lower interest rate environment was that for the bulk of the population the experience of these interest rates was unknown -- they went and bought a second
or third car, five DVD systems, ten handbags, three or four houses -- they went on a spending spree such that loans and advances to the private sector was at 23% in June and then rose to 34,6% in July